Shrinivas Havanur obituary

My friend Shrinivas Havanur, who has died aged 82, was an authority on the Kannada language, his much-loved mother tongue which is spoken nowadays by some 35 million people in the state of Karnataka, southern India.

He was born into a Brahmin family in the village of Havanur. He went on to become librarian of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai before leaving this prestigious post to become professor of Kannada, first at Mumbai University, then at Mangalore University. His research brought him into contact with the Basel Mission, a Protestant society with roots in Switzerland and south-western Germany, whose staff, in the 19th century, had researched the Kannada language and its literature. They had played an important part in transforming it into a language for modern discourse and media.

I was archivist of the Basel Mission when Havanur came to me wanting, for his first short stay in Basel, the same kind of 24/7 access he had provided for scholars when he was a research librarian. We came to an understanding that allowed him to work night and day, as he wanted.

Since that first visit, we had been firm friends and colleagues. I had no background in Indian studies, and he opened up a whole new world for me, not least in my understanding of the significance of this group of missionaries in the history of Karnataka.

Havanur became almost an ambassador-at-large for the Basel Mission in Karnataka, with his pointed, critical but positive judgments about the missionaries' linguistic work in academic publications and the press.

In retirement he became an honorary resident member of Karnataka Theological College. Assisted by the college archivist, he produced the definitive computer catalogue of the many Basel Mission publications in his language. He also helped to get a government university to mandate the college to teach and examine masters' and doctoral degrees in Kannada language and literature.

Havanur was a member of the committee that ensured a statue of the mission's great Kannada lexicographer, Ferdinand Kittel, be erected on municipal land on Mahatma Gandhi Road, in the centre of Bangalore.

He is survived by his wife, Bharati, two sons, a daughter and four grandchildren.